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You should probably read the previous chapters before reading this one. There are re-occurring characters and references to previous events. Start at the bottom and work your way up.
(Yes, I know that they're technically too short to be Chapters. It's just easier to track them, that way.)
Chapter 7: Sometimes Nothin' Develops At All.
The elevator shudders to a stop at my floor and I sit there on the bench, waitin' before I lift the gate. No need ta hurry. At this late hour, ain't nobody comin' into this buildin'. A night this hot and you just want to be home, sweatin' in bed, or sittin' in front of your electric fan, or coolin' off on the fire escape. I'm thinkin' about my own fire escape and how I 'd liketa cop a nap out there. How cool the breeze off the lake can be. Even on a summer's night, like this one. In fact, that's where I'm headin' right now.
But as I said, the elevator is stopped and I could lift the gate and get out, but I'm thinkin' about somethin' she said once. She said, "You know, I can hear the gears of that old button box, cut right through my walls. I know everytime anyone goes up or down in that damned thing." She was always sayin' clever stuff like that. I guess you could say that she was a clever little dame.
I know that as soon as I lift the gate, she'll hear that too and then the counter-weight come bangin' down. And she'll know it's me. Nobody else has business this late in the building. Lately, I been takin' to sleepin' in my office. I hate the drophouse where I been crashin'. The office just feels safer.
I sit here on the bench in the elevator and get out my flask and take a big pull off it and the stiff hooker of booze explodes down into my gut like nitroglycerine and really there's no point to drinkin' more. I'm already lookin' at the world through a fishbowl, if you take my meanin'. I'm practically out on the roof, at this point.
"What the hell," I say, "Can't sleep on this bench. Not again."
And I get up and throw open the gate forcefully, raisin' all sortsa ruckus and bangin' and clatterin'. I don't even care if she does lay ears on me anymore. My shoe catches on the gap of the elevator and I spill out into the hall as the gate slams closed behind me and I have to take a second to get my legs under me. There I am, standin' in the hallway that used to lead to nothin' but mine and The Turk's office and an empty office that the buildin' manager never could rent. Only she rented it and now she's here too. Twenty feet away from me, I can see the red light on through the smoked glass and I know she's still here, probably developin' her pictures again. Her late night habit.
I remember that red light and the magic way that she would drop a glossy white sheet of picture paper into one of her trays and slosh it around, using those tongs of hers and how you would first see distant shadows swimmin' into view and then the dark patches got darker and shapes came together and next thing you know, there's a picture of the the Alderman giving a speech down at the park, pointed finger raised up to the sky, to make his point. Or maybe it's a picture of her favorite jazz band playin' some goofy, bluesy fugue for horns. She was partial to the drummer. Or maybe it would be a gang o' kids playin' in the park fountain with their dog on some sunny afternoon.
I remember the time that she slowly waved the picture until the image of me, sittin' out on my fire escape, smokin' a butt and lookin' out on the city came into view and that was the first time that I knew that she meant somethin' more for me. Hell, I never even heard her take the picture. I guess I was deep in thought, at the time. At least I look like I am in the picture. She must've leaned out her window and snapped a shot of me, all quick like. She hung up the picture on the clothesline and turned to me, and grabbed me by the suspenders and pulled herself close into me and laid a big, wet honey cooler on me, so hard that I had to take a few steps back, to steady myself. She lowered me to the couch and straddled me and we kissed long and hard, as we took off each others clothes and then made crazy, urgent love to each other.
That's how I knew that she wanted me. Because she turned and grabbed me and took me. Before that, I was the private dick in the office nexta hers and she was the new lady photographer that kept late hours. But then, that's just how she was. Fierce. Strong. Powerful.
So the red light means that she's in there right now, wavin' pictures up out of the ether with her tongs. Maybe she's wearin' nothing but her boxers and her undershirt. Her other outfit of choice. I don't know why she liked to dress up in men's clothes so much. Made people think she's a dyke, but I can tell you from personal experience, she's anything but. I bet she's wearin' them boxers in there, right now. I take another plug off of the flask and I can't figure out why I'm still standin' out here, in the hallway. Why I ain't gone into my office yet. What am I waitin' for?
"I will always be here, Calvin," she said, "You can walk through this door at any time. You know that, don't you?" Maybe she knew me well enough to know that I would be out here, standin' in this hallway, tryin'ta go into my own office, but wantin' ta go into hers. Maybe she knew...
I wanna go in there right now. Christ, but she made me feel strong and capable sometimes. I tell myself how good it was with her. She was the closest thing to a full time lady, I've ever had. And I don't know, maybe because she DID dress like a joe and she was as tough and as strong as she was, maybe that was the reason why I didn' ever haveta treat her like she was so breakable. She was a pal, but she was also a lover and everything you could ever want. And parts of this would still be true if I walked back in that door right now.
But then there are the other parts that wasn't so good, too. Christ, but she had a temper on her. I never could tell what would set her off. Maybe she had a dream where I said some wisecrack at her and she would wake up, ready to raise a ruckus about it. Or maybe she got to worryin' about some other dame that I din't know nothin' about and then she was scared that I would leave her or somethin' and we would give me Hell about that too. Sometimes, she would just cry for no good goddamn reason and nothin' I said would get her to cool it. I just sat there, lookin' down at my own rough hands, while she wailed nonsense at me and I thought, "Gimme a neck to wring or a face to punch. I can't do nothin' 'bout this craziness." And if I got up and left, that would lead to a new blow up the next time I saw her, on account of I left when she said she needed me.
I couldn' figure all the waterworks and all those cryin' jags comin' from the same person what could drink me under the table and lay in the dark, smokin' butts with me. It was like she was two different people. Jeckyl and Hyde! I never knew which one would be in that office, when I walked in the door. The one with brass balls, the killer smile and the hard kisses or the one who would rage and cry and tear at my shirts and scream crazy jingo at me.
The last time I saw her, she was sittin' in that office. She'd disappeared for two weeks. Lonely nights that I would walk past that door and see the notes that I left for her, jammed in the door. And when she finally did show up again and I saw the red light on, I knocked on that door as gentle as I could, waitin' to see who was on the other side. She called me in, her shirt sleeves rolled up and her togs dressed to the nines. She was smokin' a butt and I could see her sizin' me up in the darkness. Her sharp peepers lookin' me over. And I asked how she was and how her trip was, guessin' that there was a trip had. And she cut me off and went straight into this business about some words that we'd had weeks before, just like it was the fresh. Like it had just happened and she still wanted to grind teeth about it. I saw her trap runnin' a mile a minute and never even pausin' for me to get a word in edgewise. And even if she DID let me talk, I don' know what I would even say.
An' I just stood up and put my lid on and started for the door.
"Where are you going?" she asked. She took a powerful, angry draw off of her smoke.
"Out. I'm gonna drift." I didn't turn back to look at her niether.
"Is this it?" she asked. Still angry. Still sharp.
"Yeah, I guess it is. This is it. The last time I'm walkin' through this door, sister." And I opened the door and prepared to leave.
"I will always be here, Calvin," she said, "You can walk through this door at any time. You know that, don't you?"
"I won't, though." and I knew, as I was sayin' it, that this really was it and that I would never walk through that door again. No matter how bad I wanted to. No matter how weak or lonely or sad I felt. No matter how much I missed her. No matter how much I wanted her. I would never walk back in that office again. I'm too hard for that. That's the kind of man that I am. For better or for worse, that's the sand that I'm made of.
And that's why I'm standin' here in the hallway, lookin' at the red light comin' through that door and it's only now that I can see her on the other side, lookin' out at this hallway. At me! Through the smoked glass, I'm sure that she can see the dim blue lights of this hallway and the clear shadow of the man, standin' not twenty feet away from her. Who knows how long she's been lookin' at me. I been standin' here, thinkin' for a while now. Christ, why does that woman make me so dizzy?
All the sudden, I feel a rage burnin' up from somewhere deep inside me. Sure, it feels like rage, but there's also a heapload of shame and sorrow all mixed in there and it's barrelin' up out of my guts like a steam engine and I feel everything so crazy for a minute there and it clenches up my throat and bursts out of my mouth and I bellow out, "GODDAMN ME FOR BEING A HORSES ASS AND GODDAMN YOU TOO!!!" and I turn and kick open my office door, enter the room and slam the door shut behind me. And as quickly as that bad spell came up on me, I feel it fade away like the rattle of my slammed door.
I feel the stillness of my office creep over me and inside, I am still too. I start to strip off my clothes. I throw my flogger over on the receptionists chair with my lid. I drape my jacket over a chair in my office and throw my necktie on my desk. I grab my deck of Luckies and my lighter out of my shirt pocket and throw my shirt on my chair. Same with the trousers. I unstrap my leathers and leave my dusters on the desk chair too. In case I need 'em quick-like. I open a drawer on my desk and drop the flask in and take out the bottle of giggle-juice. I unstrap the sock garters and drop my socks onto my shoes and pad around my desk, my big, flat feet, slappin' tile. I walk over to my fire escape window and raise it and climb out onta my fire escape. I notice that she's got her windows open too. Well, it's a hot night, I guess.
The city is alive below me. I can hear a cat howlin' because he's hungry and two greasers arguing down the corner. I slowly climb the stairs of my fire escape, heading up to the 9th floor. A gasper hangin' from my lips. Out in the night, a baby cries somewhere, is given the tit and trails off it's bawlin'. I hear the urgent, gentle murmurs of someone down the alley makin' time with her man. A wino sings a sad song quietly to himself and breaks up, cryin' a bit. Cabbies honk their horns. Radios blend their voices in a crazy mix that I can't understand. There's a hum from all the fans in all the windows of every building on my block. I get to the top of the fire escape and I can see the outline of the skyscrapers in this crummy burg, risin' out of the electric glow of the city. I can see water towers and radio aerials and the lights in the windows around me. A late night El train rackety-clackets it's way through the city.
I see a couple slow dancin' together, on the roof of the next block over. Someone's playin' a violin, somewhere around here for them. I open the bottle of Eel Juice and hold it up to them. I toast their happiness and take a deep, long drag off of it for them. I cap the bottle and bunk down on the bars of the fire escape, settin' my bottle, my smokes and my lighter on the ledge and I look up at the stars, all bright and sharp and far off. I think to myself that despite the miseries of the world and how sometimes things don't turn out the way that you think that they might, life is usually pretty good. I mean, we always got the stars, don't we? I settle down, my arms crossed under my head for a pillow and I fade away.
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